webOS Exhibition Mode Hands-on Preview 44
When we first saw Exhibition mode for webOS previewed at Developer Day in New York last November, it was primarily a set of slides and not actually running on-device. Well, we've now seen it running on a Pre 3 here at Mobile World Congress and although we suspect that it's not quite ready, we thought y'all might like a glimpse of how it's coming along.
Read on, glanceable information aficionados!
First up, the slide above is from HP's developer presentation and it shows the Facebook Exhibition mode (or at least one slide of it) on a Veer. That code sadly wasn't live on the Pre 3 we handled, but it looks like an improved version of what we saw in November so we suspect that's probably not going to be far from the final product.
On our Pre 3, we were able to launch Exhibition's preferences and poke around. Yes - for now if you don't have a Touchstone handy but absolutely must get at your Exhibition apps, you can launch into Exhibition mode by tapping a button inside the preferences.
In Exhibition Preferences, you can toggle which Exhibition "apps" you'd like to have available to you on the Touchstone and also tap a button to do an automatic search of the App Catalog for other 'apps' that work with Exhibition.
We had the Time, Agenda, and Photo views available to us. As you can see in the gallery below they're pretty simple affairs - and that's a good thing. You switch between the modes via a drop-down menu in the upper left and you can exit Exhibition mode with a cool zoom effect by swiping up from the gesture area.
Update: One more feature coming to webOS 2.1 that we neglected to mention is Touchstone-awareness - your webOS phone can be aware of which Touchstone it's on and display a different Exhibition app for each. That's not a feature we see here yet. And no, we're not sure if that feature will work with current generation Touchstones or no - we'll see what we can find out.
44 Comments
Wasn't there talk about it displaying different data depending on where the touchstone was located?
No. As I understand it you can probably set preferences which TS ist located where. I assume the device and the ts communicate the serial-# of the TS or something like that. i.e. you can tell your device to show agenda exhibition on the ts in your office and i.e. photo exhibition at home. Again: I don`t have any knowledge about how it works, but I believe it is something like a serial-# to tell the device, which TS it is on.
Couldn't the phone just check the GPS coordinates when placed on a TouchStone?
I know some Pre owners have touchstones installed in their cars.
I'd love the ability to have the touchstone in the car automatically do something (maybe turn on Music Remix and enable bluetooth) regardless of the gps coordinates.
nnb
i, for one, am staying with WebOS mostly becuase of how awesome it is to have a touchstone in my car. its soooo convienent. my android sporting friends are like wow i wish i had that.
lol me too my droid buddy was pissed when he saw my custom touchstone mount and how slick it was to play Pandora through bluetooth.
You can do just that (and a whole lot more) with Sconix's Mode Switcher app.
Exactly.
I have mine set to increase screen brightness to 85%, launch drPodder and change Govnah to 720 fixed when it sees both TS and an aux cable plugged in. I never plug it in at home on the TS - so that's my car mode :) Automatically changes back to 500/1000 w/ regular screen brightness when i pick it up and get out of the car :)
Nice.
Riiight!!
Thanks to Mode Switcher, when my Pre Minus detects my car's BT profile + is placed on the TS in my car, volume decreases (calls ring thru car speakers), NoDoze turns on preventing it from locking, Music(Remix) app opens and Pandora open up and begins to play thru car speakers. Can you do THAT Android?!
I WANT to stay with WebOS because I don't want give up all this customizable goodness but I need the Pre3 to be on Sprint!
I do this too. Currently I have a touchstone at home and in the car, so the I put it on the touchstone in landscape mode at home and portrait in the car. Mode Switcher can be programed to behave differently based on orientation.
when is exhibition coming to pre 2 owners?
Is that webOS 2.2?
I have another question. Old touchstones will be also location aware or are there new touchstones that looks similar to old ones?
I don`t know, but I assume you need TS2 for the location feature. I have 4 touchstones and don`t really need the new feature. I hope that at least for charging I can keep my old TS if I upgrade to a Pre³!
Don't need flash on my Pre- but this is basic and been missing since PamOS so would be nice with that in update.
Can you guys try and see if the virtual keyboard is alive in the Pre3?
did you see the virtual keyboard leaks? they are hideous.
Why they dropped those adorable black rounded corners? That was a brilliant design.
makes the screen appear bigger (3.56 that's how HP claims it or should i say 4.0 since mathematically, we can turn the 5 & 6 to 0 and add a 1 to the 3...hehehe)
I bet HP uses 3.56" because it is larger than the iFauxn at 3.5".
There should be a setting that makes exhibition mode the default screen when the device is turned on or unlocked. Nice to finally see a feature similar to what pre-webOS Palm devices had for years.
webOS is becoming by FAR the most Unique and Innovative platform. Software and Hardware. Touch to share is a break through and touchstone is a break through. I was just watching jon rubinstein's ipod introduction. this guy must be good. I understand when he says he "has not used an iphone". He is coming up stuff from an untainted experience.
Ipod's dial is one of the best UI i have used it's so simple. And he was the Senior Hardware engineer or soemthing. I look foward to seeing more good work from both the Team from HP and PALM!
Um, don't get too attached to gestures...
I think the easiest would be exhibition based on gps, unless your on verizon, then well, you don't get gps. though i supposed car exhibition would be hard then, so sn# is probably the easiest then. Pretty neat stuff, if they can fix their customer relations they may keep me.(and Sprint gets the pre3)
What? You use a menu rather than a gesture to switch between exhibition modes??? HP sure is trying to kill the best part of webOS...
gesture navigation is going the way of the dodo bird, as we saw on the touchpad tablet. the reason being if this is being shifted to desktop and the like, not all devices will be outfitted with gesture areas. so we are going to have to use virtual buttons like everyone else. its a good and bad thing.
Although, what you said is the line HP is giving, by no means did anybody suggest that gestures must be the ONLY way to do anything. HP can add keyboard shortcuts and on-screen buttons, but why remove gesture support? Let the customer choose.
Also, the trackpad on my non-Apple laptop supports multi-touch and gestures. I would dare say gestures ARE coming to a PC near you. Wacom makes a gesture pad:
http://www.wacom.com/bamboo/bamboo_touch.php
I think HP needs to Think Beyond...
May I ask what the sense is in tying this functionality to the Touchstone charger? I don't understand why this functionality should not be accessably anytime, anywhere - independent of the touchstone.
it clearly states, that if you dont have a TS charger you can access the functionality in the preferences....i guess you didnt comprehend what you read.
"On our Pre 3, we were able to launch Exhibition's preferences and poke around. Yes - for now if you don't have a Touchstone handy but absolutely must get at your Exhibition apps, you can launch into Exhibition mode by tapping a button inside the preferences."
i agree with you, dan-o, this is, for the most part, gimmicky. what's the use? how is displaying just the time on my device innovative? yes, the touchstone was great, probably the first of its kind, but third-party have been all over that, so its old news. but developing a special viewing mode while your phone is on the charger? gimme a break. oh, and ill tell you why that they still have not addressed battery life issues. it is because they expect all the devices to be on a touchstone everywhere you go. you're probably going to need at least three of them, so stock up. that is sad they haven't done anything about the battery life issue, and it will continue with the touchpad. no way will it get the battery life of the ipad, anywhere close. with the type of marketing they are doing, they WANT you to have it on the touchstone all the time, so battery life doesn't matter. why wasn't battery life mentioned on any of the presentation slides? because it sucks! some things never change...
look, no need to be a prick. everything I've heard about exhibition inidcates its functionality is tethered to the touchstone. this quote does nothing to disabuse me of that notion:
"Yes - for now if you don't have a Touchstone handy but absolutely must get at your Exhibition apps, you can launch into Exhibition mode by tapping a button inside the preferences"
Exibition mode implies the screen will be on all the time, what would be the use of a slide show if the screen goes blank in 30 seconds. If you think battery life sucks now try having the screen always on while not on a touchstone. FWIW I get a pretty full day of use without having to charge but since I have a touchstone on my desk at work having something useful showing while there would be nice. In the olden days of my early career I carried a Day-Timer paper based organizer and had a nice little stand the held it open at about the same angle as the touchstone holds a Pre. Having exibition mode keep my agenda open while at work would frankly make a lot of sense. Having it keep my agenda open while in my pocket not so much.
Is that a new facebook app I see in the image at the top?
nothing to write home about!
Promises, promises, promises. Tell us when it is available!
I am really tired of "coming soon" and "early next year".
Still waiting for my upgrade to my "legacy" Pre and looking at an HTC Shift or other Android Phone!
I am now convinced that Adrioid sucks due to its fragmentation. I think most people who flee to one of the Android clones are going to be just as frustrated as they were with webos's shortcomings.
Cool feature... too bad my Pre- (which I'm stuck with for another 1.5 years) will never get this. It almost hurts to read anything about WebOS 2 knowing HP won't let me have it.
Hold on there: YOU HAVE A PRE 3?!?!?! Did I miss something here?
good theory.. Making touchstone sexier helps them shirk their optimization of battery life duties. *sigh*
So I guess we can use our current Pre touchstones with the new Pre 3? Thank goodness, I have 4!!
My pre basically dose this already with the No Auto-Off While Charging patch. Whether it be Facebook or a photo app or the larger clock or Active card you can display any app you have with this patch on the touchstone. The real question did they get rid of the charging alert sound or dose it still ding as soon as the battery is fully charged. But if not theres a patch for that as well thank you homebrew!!!
@LTrane
There actually is an app called tasker that will do similar things. I'm hoping this new batch of hardware makes it to Sprint, and will be absent of all the lagging problems my OG Pre had. Just playing with my overclocked Pre the other day had me EXTREMELY frustrated after using my HTC EVO after a while. I do miss a physical keyboard though, and love the vertical slider the Pre seems to always have.
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